Of course, some sites are banned on HN. zerohedge.com has been banned for a long time, because its articles tend to be sensationalized, which makes them off topic here. A user vouched for that submission, which unkilled it. Then other users flagged it, and a moderator penalized it as sensational, or at least as not rising above the noise level amid the flood of covid-19 submissions. This is all routine.
Yes, HN automatically flags articles from certain sites. You can see the post with your account, but if you look with a different account, you'll see it is flagged and not visible for most people.
The link is not flagged, it was automatically hidden. Why show it when I am logged in vs show something else for user who is not logged in ? Isn’t that “shadow banning links” ?
